Back on Oahu, where cats are easily found...

-
A few of the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve cats.  Some have an ear-tip (sign of spay or neuter) and others do not.

So I was in the Sydney and surrounding area for a couple of weeks, and visited a number of coastal cities large and small up the Gold Coast over another week.  Then I visited 3 islands in New Caledonia, including the capital city of Noumea.  I asked about free-roaming cats with security officers, police, and lifeguards... people who are outside a lot, and pay attention to details.  I found 1 cat (in Noumea), and heard lots of stories about cats "over there" but not "here."
Hanauma Bay cats being fed.
Then, I returned to Oahu.  Between the Hawaii Kai Park & Ride, the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, and Manoa Theater I saw dozens of cats, some clearly socialized, and others very wild.  I also saw many mongoose, chickens, and pigeons running or flying around at Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve.  In Hanauma Bay, I can imagine a complex food web... pigeons, mongoose, and cats eat offerings of cat food, plus garbage, and the cats eat baby mongoose and naive pigeons, the mongoose eat pigeon eggs and squabs and perhaps kittens, and the pigeons just keep reproducing in protected alcoves on the cliff wall. 
Ear-tipped Manoa Theater cat
Community cat found in Noumea, New Caledonia.
I don't mean to imply that there are no cats in Sydney and Noumea, and a mere "dozens" in Oahu.  I know officials in Sydney have concerns about free-roaming cats.  I plan to track down a vet in Noumea to discuss cats (although I don't speak French... I need to practice my "le chat."  There have to be cats.  But in Noumea, for example, I wandered the harbors, the vegetable and meat markets, a downtown urban park, and streets in both upscale and graffiti-plagued neighborhoods, and only saw a single cat, a community cat named PaPa or PawPaw.
But the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, managed by the City and County of Honolulu, is not the place anyone should expect to see free-roaming and feral cats (as well as mongoose and pigeons, and probably the chickens, although I've been told that the chickens are used as "centipede control").  The fact that no one seems to be able or willing to take ownership over these animals or their management is the telling part of the story.  Every agency involved has a valid or semi-valid reason not to do anything... not the mission, no funding, no expertise, supervisors or politicians won't allow management, can't keep workers from feeding, no funding, animals keep getting dumped off, can't keep the animals out, conflicting or unworkable laws and regulations, no funding... 
Many visitors at Hanauma Bay seem to enjoy the presence of cats.

I have my ideas, of course (I'd tell you, but then I'd have to defend them, so pass).  Seriously, for all the concerns over the impacts of Oahu's cats on terrestrial and marine wildlife, human health, and community aesthetics, if people can't get together regarding the few dozen cats at Hanauma Bay, then why would we ever expect cooperation on a larger scale crossing multiple political boundaries and agency responsibilities?

 I will continue to investigate feral and free-roaming cat management during my travels.
Manoa Valley community cat.
Community cat on Beretania Avenue.
Hawaii Kai Park & Ride cat.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Voyager of The Seas: giving guests a reason never to cruise again

-
Image
  A "veggie burger" in the Windjammer buffet.  If I wanted mashed potatoes, I'd choose mashed potatoes. After spending a month on the Anthem of the Seas , I was looking forward to a trip on a different ship. And this trip was going to include the entire family, some of whom had never cruised before, so I was looking forward to them being impressed with a week on the Voyager of the Seas. Voyager is a smaller ship than Anthem , so I knew in advance there were some missing amenities. Still, they were all part of the Royal Caribbean corporate ecosystem, so the overlapping elements, like the quality of the food and service or the accuracy of the "Cruise Compass" (a digital or paper calendar detailing everything there is to see and do onboard, from dining times to the location of trivia contests to where all the many musicians are playing) should be similar. It wasn't. The week we returned home, we canceled our future transatlantic cruise on the  Voyager. We neve...
Read more

The one, the only... Chobe National Park, Botswana!

-
Image
We were on our way to the famous Chobe National Park, in northern Botswana.  This visit was somewhat troubling for me.  In May, Botswana's president had announced an  end  to a five year ban on elephant hunting.  Elephant hunting?  There were calls for a boycott against Botswana.  Botswana is a bright spot for African savannah elephants, with over 100,000 in the country.  The proposal was to permit around 400 elephants to be killed by trophy hunters, who presumably would pay $30-50 thousand dollars to kill each of these animals (at $40,000 each, that would come out to $16 million).  There's roughly an equal number of elephants being poached for their ivory each year in Botswana.   I'm going to editorialize on hunting elephants for a moment.  Just scroll down to the white rhino photo below to skip my ramblings. But the overall populations of both forest and savannah elephants in Africa are in steep decline (espe...
Read more

The Tale of the Maui Mystery Cat

-
Image
In 2003, a jaguar was suspected of terrorizing residents of the Olinda area, Maui. Photo of a jaguar attacking a cayman in the Pantanal, Brazil, by Frank Schoen. Copyright: https://www.123rf.com/profile_djambi1969 . Used with permission.      In 2003, I was sitting in a Starbucks across from the Honolulu Zoo in Waikiki, reading the Honolulu Advertiser , when I came across an article about the sighting of a large, cat-like creature on Maui. I don't have that initial article, but I did find an archived copy of an article from Hawaii News Now on the topic: Wildlife officials are planning to intensify efforts today to capture a large catlike animal spotted in the lower Olinda area of Upcountry Maui. A search team sent out yesterday found evidence the animal does exist. They discovered tree trunks with deep scratch marks and a number of doves that appeared to be killed by a catlike paw. Wildlife experts plan to bait an existing trap today and add four more traps. Officials s...
Read more